


Inked

by IndianSummer13



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 20:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12043215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndianSummer13/pseuds/IndianSummer13
Summary: She tells him she doesn’t want him to get the tattoo. The jacket’s enough.And then, a little while later, she gets one too.





	Inked

Her hands trace an invisible line from his shoulder to his wrist. “It’s so beautiful,” she whispers into the darkness, the statement coming from what she knows, not what she can see. She can’t really see anything in the darkness of the tiny bedroom. “Uninterrupted.”

Her fingertips graze his skin again, only this time they pause at the smooth expanse of his forearm. His eyes are open; knows hers are too, and he can just about make out the whites of her eyes in the faintest sliver of moonlight. They’re disappointed in his commitment to the cause. 

At this point, Jughead is past caring whether he’s more disappointed in himself or simply resigned to inevitability. It seems futile to try and put off what’s going to be. _Que sera sera_ and all that.

He exhales and feels Betty’s fingers leave his arm in favour of entwining with his rough, calloused ones. Her eyes close and she rests her lips against his shoulder, burrowing closer and making that sleepy sigh when he shuts his own eyes too. 

In the morning, she doesn’t get out of bed to make chocolate chip pancakes. It’s something of a silent protest, although she’s not so much close-lipped about the dark serpent he’ll have etched into his skin when she returns from her shift at Pop’s, but more a giver of comments skirting around the subject. 

She doesn’t want him branded for life as a South-sider. 

He already knows a tattoo won’t change the fact that he is anyway. 

His stomach grumbles a little but the culinary blow is softened by the fact she’s draped across him: arms stretched out over his chest; legs tangled in with his; blonde hair smelling like vanilla and strawberries fanned out across his face. 

Jughead breathes her in. She’s goodness and light: his world’s antithesis but for some reason, this cramped bed in this tiny room is where she choses to sleep night after night _“because it smells like you Juggie, even when you’re not in it.”_

These days, Betty Cooper is a permanent fixture in his bed and sometimes he wonders how long it’ll stay that way. There’s college in the none-too-distant future, and a career after that, and he’ll still be here in Riverdale - a pseudo King of Snakes (at least until his dad gets out of jail).

She presses herself closer to him and breathes deeply from his collarbone. It’s her favourite place to bury her face when she sleeps, and he twitches as her hair tickles his skin. 

“Betts,” he whispers, nudging her knee with his. “I’ve got to get up.”

“Time’s it?” she mumbles sleepily, her words vibrating against his shoulder. 

“Time for me to go.”

He feels the pout as opposed to seeing it, and knows it’s only partly for show. She really, really doesn’t want him to leave but he kisses her head and then extracts himself from her limbs anyway. 

She remains tangled in his sheets as he closes and locks the trailer door behind him.

-

He grits his teeth against the burning pain. The first pierce was the worst - after that it’s simply constant, and if there’s one thing Jughead doesn’t mind in his life, it’s consistency. Bad or good, at least he knows what to expect. 

It takes well over two hours to complete but when the machine ceases its whirring, he breathes out the sigh he’s holding. His skin is red around the dark ink and he decides, looking at the snake curved into an ‘s’ that this is him now, whether he wants it to be or not. Betty will always be perfect and the world will always spin on its axis and he will always be a serpent. 

Irrevocable.

She comes over after dinner eaten with her family. Jughead almost concludes she’s not coming - another one of her silent protests - because the sky grows dark and the rain lashes down and there isn’t so much as a single text lighting up his phone. But then the tell-tale sign of her presence arrives in the form of a crunch of tyres on the gravel outside; a careful close of the car door followed by two short knocks without a wait for reply. 

“Hey,” he says softly. 

Betty doesn’t speak, just crosses the room to where he’s resting against the counter, and then carefully pulls up his sleeve.

“Did it hurt?” Her fingers dance around the redness with such tenderness that his heart almost gives out. “It looks sore, Jug.”

She’s worrying her lip with her front teeth and he uses his thumb to coax it free. She looks up at him with those pools of green and he kisses her, soft and gentle.

“It’s fine.”

It isn’t fine - not really. He doesn’t want this branding on his arm any more than she does, but it’s part of their new uniform (much like the leather jackets are) and as long as this new family continues to take care of him as promised, he’ll do his part to fit in. 

“How was your shift?”

“Fine,” she answers, still fixated on the smooth curve of ink. 

“Betts.” He means to tell her not to worry about what the tattoo signifies; not to worry about _him_.

“Sorry.” She drops her fingers reluctantly at the knowing look and seems to remember not cooking him breakfast in the morning. “You must be starving. You want pasta?”

It’s not like he hasn’t eaten all day, but a substandard burger at the Whyte Wyrm isn’t the same as her pancakes, nor is it a match for a cheeseburger and fries at Pop’s. His answer must be evident in his eyes because Betty lets out a soft laugh, presses a kiss to his cheek and says, “I’ll set a pan of water to boil.”

She is, Jughead thinks for what must be the millionth time, far too good for him. 

-

His skin heals and there’s a strange development: Betty doesn’t hate the tattoo. In fact, he thinks she might even find it a turn on. 

They’re curled up on the couch, watching a pretty nondescript movie she’d selected on Netflix and usually, Jughead wouldn’t entertain such a substandard plot. Except her lips are resting on the area of his forearm coloured in black and her fingertips are tracing the serpent’s outline knowingly. He wonders whether she could map him blind. 

He’s almost certain he’d be able to do the same with her.

Shifting slightly so his entire right side doesn’t go dead, he drops a kiss to her head. He doesn’t expect her to lift her face up towards him, but when she does, her eyes are dark and so he peels off the pink cardigan she’s wearing. 

Later, instead of choking out his name when she comes, she sinks her teeth into the flesh of his forearm, and afterwards, she doesn’t apologise like he expects her to, but strokes her thumb over his skin until the redness dissipates. 

She prefers him to wear t-shirts. The tattoo is the first place her eyes flit to after they’ve done a sweep of his own, and then his lips, and the bright green of her irises quickly becomes swallowed by the black of her pupils. 

He’s pretty certain that these days (sometimes) Betty Cooper _fucks_ him because of that damn drawing on his skin.

-

The winter finally gives out at some point in early April after one final snowstorm nobody had predicted. The harsh wind dies down to a quieter, much more gentle breeze that picks the blossom off of the trees and whispers it along the streets so the sidewalks are punctuated with pink and white. And then, finally, summer arrives with long, lazy skies that seem to stretch for miles at sunset, the air hot and thick between the buildings (and the trailers) of the town’s south side. 

Jughead returns home from the Whyte Wyrm one Saturday evening to find his girl lifting a lasagne out of the oven in a traditional-Betty-Cooper summer dress: white with tiny yellow flowers which seem to highlight the blonde in her hair and pick out the green of her eyes. It’s not unusual to find her in his trailer these days, nor is it unusual to find her cooking in his kitchen, but there’s something about her expression that’s...different. Not bad different, just _different_.

“Smells good,” he tells her, heading for the bathroom to wash up. He’d hate to put dirty hands on such a clean dress. (Except, he wouldn’t really of course, but he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t be thrilled about him leaving fingerprints on what is quite clearly a new item of clothing.)

The corners of her mouth quirk just the slightest, and he frowns. “Betts?”

“Yeah?”

“Everything okay?”

She turns to look at him, eyes sweeping his own, and then his lips, and then the dark serpent on his arm - as they always do. “Of course.”

Her fingers don’t appear to be curling inward against her palms and so he nods and steps beyond the livingroom to the bathroom. When he’s done washing up, he crosses back to her, resting his hand on her hip as he leans in to kiss her and he swears he hears a breath hiss from between her lips. Before he can think too much about it though, she entwines his fingers with hers and slips her tongue into his mouth.

She tastes like strawberry milkshake. 

They eat the lasagne she’s cooked sitting on the couch with music playing and when they’re done, Betty collects their plates and sets them by the sink. Jughead watches her for a minute, curious as to why she’s spending so long facing the sink without actually running the water or making any attempt to clean the dishes. 

He’s just about to rise from the couch when she speaks his name softly into the air. “Jug?”

“Yeah?”

She opens her mouth to say whatever it is circling in her head but then promptly closes her lips again, instead, crossing over to where he’s sitting so she can seal those lips over his. Her fingers find their way into his hair, tugging lightly at the back of his neck so he’ll angle his head just that little bit higher so she’s got the leverage she wants. 

And this is Betty Cooper kissing him in his trailer. He’ll give her everything she wants.

If he can.

His hand inches higher up her leg, hitching the material of her dress so it’s bunched around her thighs in a decadant display of her summer tan. 

“Bedroom,” she mumbles against his lips, and so he hooks his hands under her thighs to get them there faster. There’s her smile against his mouth which makes him smile too - just for a moment until he can’t kiss her properly - and then he’s back to being serious about this makeout session and where it’s leading. 

It’s leading to his bedroom. 

_(And they both know where making out in his bedroom leads)_

Jughead lays her down on the mattress, careful to sweep the blonde waves out of the way first, and watches as Betty takes her bottom lip between her teeth. Her eyes are soft and she’s looking at him in a way she never has before.

“What?” he whispers, stroking her cheek with his fore and middle fingers. 

“I love you, Jug,” she says simply. He doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of hearing it. And then she peels her dress off and he thinks the world must stop spinning.

There, sitting just above the delicate lace strip of her white underwear, is a tattoo.

His fingers move to it of their own accord, landing on her skin feather-light to trace the outline of the tiny ‘s’ of the serpent figure. When he looks up at Betty’s face, she’s watching him intently - waiting for his reaction.

His lips crush hers and then he’s tugging her underwear off and her hands are pulling at the t-shirt he’s wearing, followed by the jeans and then his boxers, and he’s guiding her onto him like their lives depend on it.

She rolls her hips, breath stuttering out of her mouth in bursts, and Jughead’s completely enraptured with the way her body fits with his. His fingers press into her hips, sinking white circles into her skin in stark contrast to the black ink, and _Jesus Christ_ she got a matching tattoo in a place only _he_ gets to see. 

“Fuck, Betty,” he groans, not even sure whether the words are aimed more at the feel of her around him or the sight of her on top of him.

Both, he thinks.

Later, when she’s curled up against him in that tiny bed and his fingers are stroking the patch of sore redness on her hip, he manages to gather enough words together to ask her why she’s marked her skin in the same way he has.

“Because I’m yours Juggie,” she sighs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Her eyes close and her own fingertips come to rest on his forearm. 

And if there was any doubt in his mind about what the end of the summer will mean for them - what her leaving for Columbia will mean - he’s got his answer in that tattoo: She has never been - and will never be - more _his_.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated.


End file.
